The Glass Pearls (Faber Editions): 'A wonderful noir thriller and tremendous rediscovery' - William Boyd

Loved this book. Intriguing to the end. Slightly old fashioned, but very well written.

An utterly gripping blend of kitchen-sink realism and slow-building, noirish thriller. First published in 1966 this was the second novel by Emeric Pressburger, better known as one half of the acclaimed, film-making duo Powell and Pressburger. The novel was reviewed once, badly, and then lapsed into obscurity, perhaps because the public weren’t ready for Pressburger’s particular perspective on the actions of a fugitive, Nazi war criminal. It's an incredibly taut piece, unusual for its time when representations of Nazis were embedded in a general “them versus us” narrative, in which cartoonlike German villains were defeated by the British forces of good.It concerns an outwardly unremarkable, middle-aged German, Karl Braun. Braun lives in a seedy, Pimlico boarding-house and scrapes a living as a piano tuner. But Braun has a secret, he’s actually a former concentration-camp doctor who butchered countless Jews in his experiments on memory and its site in the human brain. Braun has reinvented himself, living on borrowed anecdotes and waiting for the war trials to be over. He meets a girl and forms friendships with his fellow residents including Kolm a Czech Jew who fled the Nazis in the 1930s. The only traces of Braun’s former life surface in his mind, filled with overwhelming, mental images of the death of his wife and child in the notorious, Hamburg bombing raids. Yet he lives in a state of constant anxiety convinced that people are on his trail, just out of sight, determined to do him harm. Then a new trial highlights Braun’s activities in the concentration camp and he’s forced to flee.Pressburger pulls off something extraordinary here, making Braun a rounded, almost sympathetic character, to the point where I found it hard not to root for him in his flight from justice – an image that’s gradually dispelled as Pressburger goes on to reveal the extent of Braun’s brutality and his contempt for those around him. It’s a remarkable feat, made even more so when you consider Pressburger’s own past. Pressburger was Jewish, born in Hungary, he moved to Berlin where he had a promising career at the prestigious UFA studios, a job he was forced to abandon when Hitler came to power. He later learnt of the deaths of his mother and other family members at Auschwitz. Yet Braun operates as a form of doppelgänger in Pressburger’s narrative, a distorted mirror image of its author – the remorseless Braun’s laden down with physical characteristics, experiences and a love of literature and music that echoed Pressburger’s own. A fact that adds to the poignancy and force of the piece, a vehicle perhaps for dealing with Pressburger’s particular brand of survivor’s guilt; or an attempt to understand the motivation behind the atrocities committed by seemingly-cultured men like Braun; or possibly a manifestation of his suppressed fears at what might lie behind the exteriors of the Germans he encountered in the years after the Holocaust. The last reinforced in the afterword by Pressburger’s grandson, director Kevin Macdonald, who recalls his grandfather’s desperate attempts to dodge an ambulance crew called to assist him after a dangerous fall, convinced these were orderlies sent to escort him to the gas chambers.Despite the potentially fraught subject matter, it’s a highly-disciplined piece. As you’d expect from a writer with an impressive background in cinema, there’s a strong sense of place and careful attention to detail, all combining to present a clear, visual picture of settings and characters. It reminded me, at times, of reading Dorothy Hughes’s In a Lonely Place or Graham Greene’s depiction of the cornered Pinky in Brighton Rock. Introduced here by author Anthony Quinn.

This was quite a powerful novel by the author better known as half of the 1940s/50s classic film producing partnership of Powell and Pressburger. Written in 1965 it was forgotten about for half a century, after a negative review in the Times Literary Supplement, and reissued in 2015. Set at the time it was written it concerns a (fictional) escaped Nazi war criminal living in London under an assumed identity and seeking a normal life, 20 years after the war's end. He knows the net is closing on him, but does not know exactly who is wielding it, and who is helping them. This novel is highly unusual in being written from the war criminal's point of view, allowing the reader to identify to some extent with the subject's dilemma, while rightly not arousing particular sympathy for him...even more so as, shockingly, he is not just a "standard" concentration camp or Nazi official, but a Mengele type who performed experiments on subjects' brains. This is particularly remarkable a feat of writing given that the author was Jewish.The book was a very good read, and also gave a good feel for the England of the time, two decades after the war, but before what we usually think of as the 1960s had really taken hold. The ending was certainly dramatic, with a twist in the resolution. My only criticism is that I think it might have been slightly better had the reader not become aware almost at the start of Karl Braun's true background, but come to realise it more slowly as clues emerge. He is certainly clever and cunning and could have deceived the reader for longer, as he does the characters he interacts with, especially Helen Taylor, his (sort of) girlfriend. But this was an excellent read.

A great, but little known novel, with a very disturbing and memorable ending.

This book is well written but it is of another time. Nowadays few older men would strike up a romance with a young woman and not expect a physical relationship. There is suspense and the interest of our ambiguous feelings towards the central figure. However there is also a lot of detail which spins the book out but also causes the tension to sag. It would have merited a short story rather than a novel and has the potential to be a good film.

Imagine you are a Nazi war criminal, a doctor who performed unspeakable brain surgeries on prisoners in a death camp. It’s now 20 years after the end of WWII, and you are living under an assumed identity as a piano tuner in London, England. How do you live?This is the premise behind The Glass Pearls. Karl Braun who is working as a piano tuner in London in the mid-60s, but who also conducted grisly operations on concentration-camp victims 20 years earlier. Karl – formerly Dr Otto Reitmuller – is constantly in fear of being caught, and spends his days constantly on the watch for people watching him. He lives a life of paranoia and unease. He tries to maintain some relationships, but his suspicions overpower him.This is noir at its blackest and bleakest. I can’t say more about it for fear of spoilers, but I found it compelling in many ways.

Excellent roman longtemps oublié et récemment redécouvert, écrit par une grande figure du cinéma britannique.

A great anti-hero, you start off empathising and gradually realise what a monster the main character actually was. Written when Nazi war crimes were still being identified and the great nazi-hunters were playing cat and mouse with those who had committed crimes against humanity the story turns that experience on its head.